Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Wednesday July 28, 2010 @10:57AM
from the this-can-only-end-well dept.

beetle496 noted a blog entry saying"The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) on the Accessibility of Web Information and Services Provided by Entities Covered by the ADA (i.e., State and Local Government Entities and Public Accommodations). You can read the fact sheet, or the entire notice. In short, the Department is seeking comments on their desire to revise regulation to 'establish specific requirements for State and local governments and public accommodations to make their websites accessible to individuals with disabilities.' The Department is seeking specific comment on many things including the standards they should adopt, and if there should be any exemptions for certain entities (e.g., small business) before they publish their Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. This is amazing news! The impact that this will have for individuals with disabilities cannot be overemphasized. It is time for our digital society to forever include individuals of all abilities. The period of public comment is open for 180 days."

I agree with it; governments SHOULD be accessible to all. Note this doesn't cover private web sites. Most private web sites (by "private" I mean non-government) are shooting themselves in the foot if their sites aren't readily accessible to everyone.

Er, I must plead guilty, though. My Quake site (1997-2003) had spinning gifs (but not where they would interfere wiht reading the text), the background animated while loading (a Matrix-like pattern of ones and zeros that moved and disappeared), and no Midi loop,

I agree with it; governments SHOULD be accessible to all. Note this doesn't cover private web sites. Most private web sites (by "private" I mean non-government) are shooting themselves in the foot if their sites aren't readily accessible to everyone.

The same arguement could be made for handicapped spaces. Public (as you define it) should have such spaces, but I argue that the extreme requirements created a lucrative litigation ecosystem surrounding it that truly doesn't serve the needs of either the handic

The real problem with the current system (IMO) is that--as always--regulation and government-created scarcity has lead to efforts to game the system and unintended consequences out the wazoo.

This results in things like a morbidly obese patient slipping the doctor a $100 and getting a handicapped placard. So the fatty who most needs to walk the extra 100 ft a week now parks as close to the ice cream aisle as possible. Or to people either holding on to their placards after they've expired or making fake ones.

When I worked in construction in L.A (putting myself through college) with my dad's company I saw two projects canceled because of the cost of complying with the ADA. One was a parking structure where the powers-that-be decided that it wasn't sufficient to have the "correct" number of handicapped spaces on the ground level--there must be an elevator in case some handicapped person parked in a non-handicapped spot on the 2nd floor and couldn't use the stairs.

Unintended consequences, my friends: it's the gift of government that keeps on giving and giving and giving.

And you can be sure that any effort to label the Web as a "public accommodation" will be evenhandedly applied by whichever of our two corrupt parties is currently in power. They'd never even think of using the "Justice" Department to harass website owners whose sites are ideologically opposed. Never, ever... pinky-swear, cross their hearts and hope to die.

There's your problem right there. California, and LA in particular, have some of the strictest, most arbitrary, most "can't fight city hall", building codes in the nation. One time, when we were following a client's standard design of having a thru-the-wall A/C unit to cool the little server room within an unconditioned stock room / warehouse, LA inspector's insisted we build a permanent ladder and a platform around it for servicing, citing a section of the code obviously intended to prevent homeowners fr

"I agree with it; governments SHOULD be accessible to all. Note this doesn't cover private web sites. Most private web sites (by "private" I mean non-government) are shooting themselves in the foot if their sites aren't readily accessible to everyone."

Except they mentioned possible exceptions for small businesses...which to me, means they ARE considering forcing these regulations on NON-govt. websites.

More likely there will be a wave of tools to facilitate making two versions of a web site and maintaining them in parallel. The marketing drones aren't likely to release their stranglehold on the web and let its original concept breath any time soon.

Good lord, no. I saw lots of websites in the 90s that were the opposite of good disabled-accessible design. Flashing red text on a green background? Try reading that if you are colorblind. Consistent and flagrant misuse of tables to format text? Ugh. Way to mess up a html reader.

Unfortunately, taking a page that was poorly designed and redoing it to be more accessible often means (in my humble experience, anyway) rewriting much of it.

The most common form of colorblindness is inability to distinguish red from green. Most other forms of colorblindness likewise involve specific pairs of colors being indistinguishable. From your comment it sounds like you see only shades of grey; that would be an extremely rare condition and is far from what is typically meant by the word "colorblind".

The most common form of colorblindness is inability to distinguish red from green. Most other forms of colorblindness likewise involve specific pairs of colors being indistinguishable. From your comment it sounds like you see only shades of grey; that would be an extremely rare condition and is far from what is typically meant by the word "colorblind".

Yes, but even that blinking red on green text was conveyed to your browser in a format easy for a screen-reader to pick up. Today I've seen companies in the healthcare industry (i.e. who should expect to deal with a lot of older people with deteriorating vision) use white-on-light-blue raster images to display text. (No, they didn't use alt tags. Yes, it would be retarded even if they had.)

Sure, it sounds like a no-brainer right? Who doesn't want to help the handicapped? The problem with requirements like this in the real world though is that inevitabley the non-handicapped (i.e., the average user) will pay a price for compliance.

Got a video on the government website you like? Well, kiss it goodbye, because the odds are that said government agency can't afford to close caption it (close captioning isn't cheap). That means they'll just have to pull it and no one will get to see it.

Got a video on the government website you like? Well, kiss it goodbye, because the odds are that said government agency can't afford to close caption it (close captioning isn't cheap). That means they'll just have to pull it and no one will get to see it.

It is also perfectly acceptable to make available a simple transcript, which is significantly cheaper because it doesn't involve setting up timings and such. This is a lot like having ALT tags for images, which should now be considered standard web etiquette.

Got a video on the government website you like? Well, kiss it goodbye, because the odds are that said government agency can't afford to close caption it (close captioning isn't cheap). That means they'll just have to pull it and no one will get to see it.

Except that both 508 and WAI consider a transcript of the audio to be an acceptable means of accessing the content for the deaf. And that same transcript can be screen read by the blind.

Got a sophisticated, sharp looking, complex website? Well, kiss that goodbye too. The Section 508 best paractices standards don't like complex layout because it confuses the text readers. Only now it won't just be a suggestion. It will be mandatory.

Sharp looking sites with complex layouts can be achieved by moving elements around in CSS while maintaining a logical (readable) source content order. As long as a screen reader can get to it, so can just about anyone else.

And don't even THINK about Flash or pretty HTML5 effects! For that matter, don't even think about tables!

Flash and HTML5, we'll see. But there are specific guidelines for building accessible tables, so I'm no

and yet they are collecting comments on establishing more standards that go beyond 508?

Most of the pics aren't tagged, the graphical navigation tabs are useless to a screen reader, and the page is full of popup javascript.

It contains an enbedded alert that may be read off by an interpreter: "Regulations.gov will undergo a scheduled maintenance outage and will be unavailable Saturday September 19, 2009, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. (ET)" Thanks for wasting time with last year's outage info.

Come on, can't government provide GOOD examples of accessible resources ESPECIALLY when gathering suggestions for how current rules and regs can be improved?

I should clarify: ALT tags exist for many of the pictures but they aren't useful tags. One is "close". As in close the door? As in close but no cigar? Tagging a pic with "logo" doesn't tell the user what distinguishes it from other logos.

Part of my job involves compliance testing for internal web sites. The regulations.gov site is pretty good from a compliance point of view. Have you tried 'viewing' it with a screen reader (eg JAWS)? All of your 'insights' are wrong.

A screen reader does not just read the source of a web page aloud. It renders the page, then helps the user navigate through it.

I did not find any non-tagged images (ok, if you look at the source you will see some, but those are in comments and thus not rendered).

The graphical navigation tabs work correctly (the reader tells the user what the alt tags are for each area of the map, and allows them to 'click' on them).

Pop-up javascript is no more of a problem to a screen reader than to a sighted user. When a pop-up occurs the screen reader will say 'new window' and read the contents of it.

The embedded alert has exactly the same effect on a screen reader as it does on a sighted person - none, because it is never rendered.

The image tagged 'close' is a big red X that is displayed at the top of a pop-up window. If a sighted person can understand that clicking on that X will close the window (as opposed to meaning 'sign here' or 'treasure is buried here'), why would a person using a screen reader have difficulty understanding that a clickable thing tagged 'close' at the top of a page will close the window?

Lastly, tagging an unclickable image as "logo" tells the user everything they need to know about it - the image contains new usable information.

You need to remember that having a page read to you is already a much slower process than looking at it. Making non-ambiguous things (like 'close' and 'logo') as terse as possible while still conveying the correct meaning is the right thing to do.

This is good news for AIs all over the web. A web site that is ADA compliant is much easier for a program to navigate than one that requires screen scraping and OCR. The bad news is that botnets can also run AIs, and making government information more available will make things easier for scammers.

Before they can even think about making their web sites accessible for those with disabilities, they need to make the sites accessible for the general public. Nearly every time I have needed to find some information at the state level, I've had to sort through pages of outdated info, buried 4 or more links deep. I can only imagine what this process is like through a screen reader or other adaptive technology.

This is amazing news! The impact that this will have for individuals with disabilities cannot be expressed.

It'll be great for those it benefits, but what about the further infringement on the right of a person to put what they please on their own website? If they don't cater to a particular audience, that audience doesn't have to visit the site. Not that this is specific to this aspect of the ADA; the same applies to brick-and-mortar stores as well. What gives anyone the right to use legal force against a business owner who doesn't configure his property so that it caters to particular people?

This is what happens in many Federal government shops. Not that they ignore the law, they just avoid any sort of enhancement or technology that can't be cost effectively implemented within the ADA regulations. A prime example is closed captioning for streaming video. It's terribly expensive to hire somebody to do real time transcription for closed captioning. The result is that many an interesting lecture or presentation is simply NOT streamed. Not because they don't want to, because they can't AFFORD to (o

A federal law compelling websites to be redesigned for defectives raises First Amendment issues. It's "forced speech".

In general, "forced speech" can be required in commercial contexts only. This has been litigated a few times [bu.edu] with regard to the Internet and the ADA.
OKBridge [okbridge.com] won on summary judgement; they don't have to make their online bridge site "accessible".
(They did put in a large-type option, but you still have to be able to see the cards to play.) AOL settled with the National Federation for the Blind, and AOL made the next version of their client program more compatible with screen reader programs.

The Department of Justice recognizes this. In their notice of proposed rulemaking, they write "It is the Department's intention to regulate only governmental
entities and public accommodations covered by the ADA that provide
goods, services, programs, or activities to the public via Web sites on
the Internet. Although some litigants have asserted that ``the
Internet'' itself should be considered a place of public accommodation,
the Department does not address this issue here. The Department
believes that title III reaches the Web sites of entities that provide
goods or services that fall within the 12 categories of ``public
accommodations,'' as defined by the statute and regulations. Because
the Department is focused on the goods and services of public
accommodations that operate exclusively or through some type of
presence on the Web--whether hosting their own Web site or
participating in a host's Web site--the Department wishes to make clear
the limited scope of its regulations. For example, the Department is
considering proposing explicit regulatory language that makes clear
that Web content created or posted by Web site users for personal,
noncommercial use is not covered, even if that content is posted on the
Web site of a public accommodation or a public entity."

I can understand that they have to make PUBLIC websites and information (state, federal, etc) accessible, but, this almost implies they are going to require that private business (eg the note about small business exceptions) HAVE to put their websites up to some form of handicapped accessible standards?!?!

WTF?

If a business doesn't cater to anyone handicapped (I guess it could happen), or just is ignorant enough to not do so and lose that business, that should be up to them.

No one is holding a gun to the person accessing a site, nor should they be holding a gun to a private business to cater to any specific crowd.

Except that the ADA already requires certain businesses to make provisions for people with handicaps. For example, a hotel is required to have a wheelchair entrance, because it is a "public accommodation." Likewise, banks have to put braille on their ATMs, bus operators have to be able to handle people who have difficulty climbing stairs (to board the bus), etc. Why should websites be exempt from these requirements?

That has nothing to do with ADA, it's just a tired old joke. It's a very simple application of the economy of standardization.

Let's say I build ATMs.

If I'm going to build 10,000 ATMs and I have to make the the buttons, why in the hell would I make TWO kinds of button, one for ATMs that need Braille and one for ATMs that do not? That doubles the cost of my key molds or machining equipment, and I have to keep track of separate inventory of assembled ATM models and separate replacement keyboards.

Instead, I'm going to make one ATM model, offer different casings for it depending on whether you want a standalone or one that's built into a wall, and I'm done. I have exactly one ATM model in stock, and when you call and order one, I ship one.

When one of your customers in a fit of piqued rage about the fact that he has to deal with those little dots on the buttons busts it with his ever-present whiskey bottle, I can replace that keyboard with the secure knowledge that it's ADA-compliant even if it doesn't need to be, because it's cheaper to make them ALL compliant.

Standardization leads to a lot of little things like this. It's usually a lot cheaper to standardize on a part that has ALL of the features you could possibly need across as many applications as possible than to make specific parts that fill the exact feature set for each application.

Random example:

Why do you think Southwest is almost invariably good about having working aircraft where they need them? Because they fly only one basic model of aircraft. They've centered their entire business model around flying routes that can fill the 137 seats in a 737-300 or 737-700 (they have a few 737-500s with lower seating capacity for specific routes, but it's a small amount of their fleet). Their pricing adjusts dynamically to make sure that their planes fly nearly full.

All of their mechanics can work on any of their airplanes, all of their pilots can fly any of their airplanes, and if a plane breaks down or is horribly late they can (with very few exceptions) replace it with any aircraft in their fleet without having to worry about finding one with the right number of seats, a qualified crew, etc.

True, but many cars are equipped with this thing called the "back seat", and most come equipped with a matching thing called a "back window". A back-seat passenger on the driver's side can reach an ATM just as easily as the driver can.

So, while it's obviously somewhat rare, the Braille on drive-up ATMs does actually get used occasionally.

However, your second point is the "give the man a cookie" one. That's exactly why drive-up ATMs have Braille. Because all ATMs do. Building a separate non-Braille versi

Yes, and because we're 100% sure that the oh-so-enlightened Obama administration would never, ever use such a provision to quell free speech rights (unlike that bad ole' satan-worshiping Bush). It's going to be a total coincidence that "Justice" department lawyers only contact Web site owners who publish views opposed to the current administration's policies.

This year, they've contacted the NRA about their non-compliant Web site, while ignoring NOW. Once the sheeple vote in 2012, they'll be harassing PETA and ignoring the Chamber of Commerce.

In fact, I've been shocked, shocked! to find out that the Democrats are owned by lobbyists just like the Republicans. Not the SAME lobbyists, of course, but just as much a wholly owned subsidiary. Whodda thunk it?

I'm all for requiring public physical places to be designed with the needs of the disabled in mind. This only makes sense and I think has made a tremendous difference for both the legally disabled and our generally aging population but I don't think the web is the equivalent of a public place. I think it's a medium more akin to a newspaper or book.

Would it make sense to REQUIRE all book publishers to publish extra copies in braille for example? I can certainly see the value of regulations which said that if the publisher (or website author) doesn't do it themselves a third-party service provider must not be prevented from (legally) making the information accessible but to require all websites to do it themselves would put a huge burden on website authors and may just cause a lot of people to stop putting information on the web unless they need to or their is a compelling commercial reason to do so.

Let's look at a project to scan in material from old books and make it available in image/pdf format for research. If the information were required to be accessible it would add a significant amount of work and cost to the (already expensive) digitization process. In my own case where I am putting up some very specific historic and technical material which I am making no money on I might just stop doing it. This would be a net loss for the spread of knowledge.

These types of regulations work best when they encourage people to do the right thing but do NOT just stop anything from happening. eg. If people stopped building public places because of the expense of ADA compliance the ADA would not make sense on a societal level as public places have value. The same goes for websites.

I don't know about you, but my online banking website doesn't look, act or feel like a book or magazine. There is a definite difference between a content web site and a web application.

I personally don't have an issue with requiring accessibility for most sites (as long as you can provide an accessible alternative to your content or web app) - the tools they do use need to be updated more often. Some of the screen readers require IE6.

Would it make sense to REQUIRE all book publishers to publish extra copies in braille for example? I can certainly see the value of regulations which said that if the publisher (or website author) doesn't do it themselves a third-party service provider must not be prevented from (legally) making the information accessible but to require all websites to do it themselves would put a huge burden on website authors and may just cause a lot of people to stop putting information on the web unless they need to or their is a compelling commercial reason to do so.

Not these days, but it would make sense to require that they provide access to an electronic copy that could then be run through whatever reader hardware/software a person might require to access that content.

It depends on how broadly you draw "public accommodation". Take computer software in general, for example. Should the government ban the release of software (open source software in particular) that does not have special support for those with disabilities? What if instead it is provided as software as a service? Does an SAS application become a public accommodation just because it is free? What if it isn't?

By the way, don't expect any small business exemption to last forever. That's what regulations are for after all: to tilt the playing field in favor of large corporations at the expense of small independent businesses.

If a business doesn't cater to anyone handicapped (I guess it could happen), or just is ignorant enough to not do so and lose that business, that should be up to them. No one is holding a gun to the person accessing a site, nor should they be holding a gun to a private business to cater to any specific crowd.

Ding ding ding.

In my hometown, a hardware store couldn't afford to put in an ADA-compliant ramp for the one guy in town who used a wheelchair. When they said as much, he sued. The store, in the family for 2 generations, closed down because the owner couldn't carry the expense of the loan he needed for building the ramp- and the cost of the lawsuit. Result: he ended up working for nearly minimum wage at Walmart and couldn't afford to put his daughters through college. Another result: his two employees lost their jobs. The landlord lost a tenant (the store sat unoccupied for 2 years, in part because everyone knew that the first business to move in would get sued for not having an ADA-compliant ramp.)

Some people just seem to forget that the world doesn't owe them anything. If you're injured or born without the ability to walk, that's nobody's problem except your own. "How cruel", you say. But where do we stop in defining disabilities? If I have autism, does that mean I can sue a store for being too noisy and crowded? If I have a peanut allergy, does a Thai restaurant have to give you a hermetically sealed room and special food stored, prepared, and cooked away from everything else?

Move to a city where businesses can afford good handicapped access. Hire someone to spend an hour each week getting your groceries. There are hundreds of solutions other than forcing your problems onto others.

In my hometown, a hardware store couldn't afford to put in an ADA-compliant ramp for the one guy in town who used a wheelchair. When they said as much, he sued. The store, in the family for 2 generations, closed down because the owner couldn't carry the expense of the loan he needed for building the ramp- and the cost of the lawsuit.

Home Depot lost a competitor and WalMart gained a low wage employee. Sounds like the ADA is functioning perfectly.

This just isn't the truth. The ADA requires reasonable accommodations - solutions that make sense and are affordable. In the case of a big business, this would definitely mean installing the ramp. In the case of a small business, this would mean finding a workable solution, that could be a ramp or could be a small staircase elevator, or could be having a call button that calls a couple of employees to lift the wheelchair user into the store. There are many different solutions that are possible, and as we kn

I find it amazing that a family that had run a hardware store for 2 generations couldn't just build their own ramp.

They were more likely perfectly capable of doing so but that doesn't mean that the "could" in a legal sense. Perhaps that city had regulations that only allow licensed contractors to perform that type of work.

Some people just seem to forget that the world doesn't owe them anything. If you're unemployed, that's nobody's problem except your own. Move to a city where you can find a job.

There's a difference between losing your job because of economic factors and losing it because of some new regulation or bureaucrat.

Not really related to the ADA but one of the most absurd things I ever saw was when OSHA fined my employer because we had a space heater with a uncovered fan in our maintenance shop. The fact that the space heater was mounted 20 feet off the ground and would require a ladder to reach didn't move the OSHA folks -- they still fined my employer. I guess someone could accidental

Um, no, wrong way to look at it. The store didn't demand anything, they just didn't choose to accommodate them. On the other hand, the disabled did demand a ramp from the store. You make think it's heartless (it isn't) but one person being handicapped shouldn't be a drain on everyone else. They shouldn't make their problem other people's problem. They have no right to do so. There are plenty of other solutions (some good, some bad) that achieve the same goal without every privately-owned store front being r

For government sites this is starting to not be true. If the law requires you to do something (e.g. file a tax return) and the only sane way to do it is through a web site (e.g. because it needs some obscure IRS form not at your local library and the IRS is only providing forms via its site), then in fact someone is holding a gun to you to access the site. That's what it means for the law to require something: a gun is being held.

"For government sites this is starting to not be true. If the law requires you to do something (e.g. file a tax return) and the only sane way to do it is through a web site (e.g. because it needs some obscure IRS form not at your local library and the IRS is only providing forms via its site), then in fact someone is holding a gun to you to access the site. That's what it means for the law to require something: a gun is being held."

Ah...but as I originally posted, I said I could understand it for websites

I can understand that they have to make PUBLIC websites and information (state, federal, etc) accessible, but, this almost implies they are going to require that private business (eg the note about small business exceptions) HAVE to put their websites up to some form of handicapped accessible standards?!?!

WTF?

That's nothing new. Private businesses like hotels and restaurants are currently required to meet the ADA standards. If you serve the public at large, you have to be able to serve folks with disabilities.

At least with these website regulations it should be relatively easy to meet them. It's all text/code anyway... Any special parsing will be done on the client's end. You just have to make sure to tag your images and make sure things are navigable. It isn't like you have to physically construct a ramp

The ADA doesn't force record shops to offer only products that can be enjoyed by the deaf. So I don't see any reason why it would require web cartoonists to offer only products that can be enjoyed by the blind. Just put some fucking alt-text in there and make it navigable by screen reader. Yes, that should be taken care of by good design, but precious few people care about good design.

I'm guessing just about enough money to fight the war in Iraq for 5 minutes. Auditing and recoding government websites will probably cost several million dollars, but that's peanuts compared to most government spending, and it's more than worth it to make sure disabled people have access to the government they help pay for.

But in terms of economic drag (let's spare readers the broken window fallacy, for the moment) how much will forcing compliance on non-government sites cost? For instance, if every small business in America (see "possible exemption for small businesses" in TFS for relevance) has to comply, what more profitable use of their time/money will they be missing out on? What's the opportunity cost here? If a business doesn't see a need to create a ADA-compliant version of their site, should they be compelled? If the

Look at the history of the implementation of the ADA to see how this will likely work. We didn't rip up every sidewalk in the nation to add curb cuts. No, the way these projects were handled was that accessibility improvements were tied to new construction or to significant reconstruction of a road, building, et cetera.

If handled the same way, web sites will need to start rolling in ADA improvements with new releases of the site or even individual pages (depending on architecture). If you design a site with

Wonko the Sane (surprised to see you here in the asylum, BTW!) is right. What you're talking about isn't the purpose, but an effect beneficial to corps with political power and detrimental to everyone else. The sense of power felt by the regulators just makes it a lot easier for bad regulations (which means "most of them") to be created. The quality of the regulation doesn't affect the feeling of power; it only affects everything else.

Apparently not by the publishers of Playboy themselves though. Of course if the magazine were offered as an online service, the problem would largely be eliminated. No secondary re-publishing required.

The thing is that there's no good reason for a web page to be "designed from the ground up to be used by the not handicapped". In fact, the original design of the web is quite amenable to use by people who may be blind, for example.

Since I fully expect that some government websites will become required-to-use (by law) in the next decade or so (e.g. as it becomes impossible to get most IRS forms other than off the IRS website), those websites need to be accessible to everyone. The other option, of course i

When viewing, sure (though it has more than just images; users can provide alt text for the images and other related information which could be of interest to someone who can't see the image). But as you yourself pointed out, flickr has both content consumption and content upload functionality. I know of several blind users who make use of flickr to post photos th

This isn't political correctness, this is basic human compassion as well as practicality. We're talking about adding basic accessibility to some web services that are quickly becoming a practical necessity in our society. A blind person shouldn't expect to pilot a fighter jet, but it's not unreasonable for them to expect to be able to pay their water bill online.

The ADA has nothing to do with making ridiculous accommodations. The requirements are sane and help ensure that people with disabilities can still function as members of our society; wheelchair ramps, braille on ATMs, lifts and elevators in public transportation. Given the fact that certain critical services are now accessed through the web (e.g. banking), it is both reasonable and logical to require certain websites to provide accessibility for people who have vision problems or who have difficulty handl

You are sick of political correctness because you are not adversely affected by the lack of it.

My 8 year old kid with cerebral palsy benefits every day from the ADA, medical assistance, school systems forced to treat him like a human being, and the market for niche medical equipment that has blossomed as a result.

Perhaps he should have just accepted that he was different and sat there staring off into space, awash in his drool, instead of partaking in a life full of experiences.

This is about every citizen having equal access to government, for example.

If you don't know the difference, then I think I've figured out what your particular disability is.

Your insinuation that everyone gets their "fair share" of harship and that this is no different for, say, a blind person than anyone else... yeah, that's nothing short of laughable.

Now it woudl be easy to assume that you have no physical disability based on your comment. Alternately its possible that you have some (most likely minor) issue that your extremely proud of overcoming "on your own", in which case I guarantee there are ways you haven't even thought of that your daily life is affected. Either way, I'm willing to bet you have at least pretty good use of your eyes, ears, and arms.

So try this: if I'm right that you have use of your eyes, go through one day wearing a blindfold. All day. No peaking, for any reason. Now imagine doing that every day of your life.

If you don't have use of your eyes, then instead try going through a day having immobilized your writing-hand arm in a sling. Again, no use of that arm for any reason.

What if someone is physically unable to click - how will a website cater to that need?

By not requiring a mouse? Most web browsers all you to navigate using the arrow keys. Of course, this means that websites may be required to not use Flash (which cannot be navigated with a keyboard only) for every damned thing, or at least provide an option for no-Flash -- the horror!

Of course, this means that websites may be required to not use Flash (which cannot be navigated with a keyboard only)

The ability to move a pointer on a 2 dimensional screen does not require the use of a mouse. It might be easier with a mouse, but the human interface device could be almost anything and flash wouldn't care.

Video that is streamed over the internet, that would be required to have closed captions if transmitted over the airwaves, should be required to transmit those captions.

Eg, NBC captions all (or almost all) of their content when broadcast, but only a limited selection of NBC content is captioned on hulu.com.

Why should NBC be required to do that and bobsTVstation.com not be? Because they had the audacity to broadcast using EM waves once and therefore when they decide to do something on a completely different

It doesn't say that. It says if the same content would be required to have CC if it was transmitted over the airwaves, it also would be required to having CC if it is transmitted over the Web. Radio transmission isn't used as a determining factor for requiring CC. Rather, they are reusing an existing standard for determining whether content requires CC (the standard that is used for radio transmissions of video) and applying that same standard to similar content with a different mode of transmission.

It doesn't say that. It says if the same content would be required to have CC if it was transmitted over the airwaves, it also would be required to having CC if it is transmitted over the Web. Radio transmission isn't used as a determining factor for requiring CC. Rather, they are reusing an existing standard for determining whether content requires CC (the standard that is used for radio transmissions of video) and applying that same standard to similar content with a different mode of transmission.

I'm have 20-20 sight (corrected) and a fine sense of touch but I have to hunt for the power button on my wife's iMac. Not that it gets turned on/off all that often, but the power switch seems to have been professionally hidden/disguised.

Using the logic they are proposing here, restaurants should not be allowed to have printed menus because some people can't see them, not allowed to have audio menus because some people can't hear them, not be allowed, in short, to have any menu short of a computer that can adapt to any combination of disability. That's simply wrong. Restaurants must allow everyone to order and be served but it's insane to think they would use the same media or tools for each.

If you read the linked documents, you'll see that they bring up the point of alternative means of access to goods/services/info. In your restaurant scenario, that means that fulfilling the accessibility obligation can include having somebody read the menu to you, provide you a braille menu, bring a sampler tray and let you nod at what you want.

Section 508 standards have long had a provision for alternative presentations of information. An accessible website can be achieved by presenting otherwise media rich

The proposal is relating to the websites of public accommodations. There is mentioned quite far in about debate regarding whether or not a business that has an online only presence can reasonably be considered a public accommodations.

It would seem that hasn't yet been decided. Better get your comments in now!

This is incorrect. Per the relevant statutory definition (42 U.S.C. Sec. 12181 [cornell.edu](7)) a variety of "entities" are defined as public accommodations, not "physical places".

Most of those entities would commonly also have physical facilities that would be their sole or primary mechanisms of interaction with the public, but many of them would, these days, also interact with the public through the Web. Some of them (particularly, certain undergraduate and postgraduate